I Will Eat This Sleepy Town: Marcin Dudek and Ben Washington

A long day at work didn't help, but sleepy I was when I arrived at Waterside Project Space and sleepy I was when I left. Stimulation for body, nil. Stimulation for mind, double nil. Stimulation for fashion savvy lobe of brain, one. (That's a good score!) Genuinely, everyone looked very nice!
The title for this exhibition in the Angel area of the big smoke, is 'I Will Eat this Sleepy Town' and this certainly sounds intriguing but you never know what to expect when you visit an art exhibit...

A long day at work didn't help, but sleepy I was when I arrived at Waterside Project Space and sleepy I was when I left. Stimulation for body, nil. Stimulation for mind, double nil. Stimulation for fashion savvy lobe of brain, one. (That's a good score!) Genuinely, everyone looked very nice!

The title for this exhibition in the Angel area of the big smoke, is 'I Will Eat this Sleepy Town' and this certainly sounds intriguing but you never know what to expect when you visit an art exhibition, so I tend not to get too expectant when I read a good title. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the event but let me tell you now, you aren't missing out. Suffice to demonstrate, in the header is a picture of the space, and now I would like you to imagine a few small groups of very fashionable people, standing around in the semi-dark, talking quite civilly and not really knowing what to do with themselves or how to look entertained when the fun of the packing tape tunnel was over.

Now, the packing tape tunnel, now that was good. Literally, the artist had constructed a twisty, turny tunnel for the visitors to walk through, constructed solely from packing tape. It was great, so magical and made you think, seeing as you couldn't see beyond its walls from start to finish, what crazy magic might be at the end of it!!! And, and then, at the very end, oh the tension!! Nothing. Some space containing the poorest excuse for artworks/sculptures/geography projects I have ever seen. I think I shall draw them.

Here it is. First sculpture, a model by an artist called Washington. It was literally like a GCSE geography model of some kind of land mass. I didn't get it and I did not like it. Right, well let's move on, I thought to myself. Give me more packing tape! Bridges, (a thematic for the show) were literally built "from nowhere, to nowhere."

The second structure:

A small mountain hanging from the corner of the vast room painted over with blue red and pink. What? It's a really large geography classroom with no primary school pupils and loads of confused kids from the senior school milling around a massive white room with no windows. Oh yeah. And there's a painting with a light-bulb hanging vertically from an extended iron rail in front of it. I quite enjoyed the challenge of having to walk around the rail without hitting my head on the low hanging bulb. Yes. I was bored. Apparently there was some music coming on later. But the exhibition preview commenced, as advertised, at 6.30. I arrived around then and the performance was at 8.30. No thanks.